High School Futures

THE HSF TEAM

The HSF team includes people who have succeeded in urban settings as teachers, principals, and consultants. We work in partnership with school districts and teachers’ unions to deepen the innovative work of teachers, broaden the definition of school-based leadership, and thereby insure that existing urban high schools prepare students for college and career.

Executive Leadership
Eva Ostrum (Founder) – An award-winning educator, Eva Ostrum has participated in two successful high school turnarounds, first as a teacher leader in Boston and later as an administrator in Philadelphia. She has consulted to numerous organizations on school reform and human capital issues, including the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, the Massachusetts Department of Education, and the New York City Department of Education. Ms. Ostrum founded and ran College Broadband, Inc., an educational media and consulting firm that focused on increasing urban students’ access to higher education. In that capacity, she produced a documentary short that screened at juried film festivals and won an award for educational excellence and wrote her first book, The Thinking Parent’s Guide to College Admissions: The Step–by–Step Program to Get Kids into the Schools of Their Dreams (Penguin, 2006). Prior to entering K–12 public education, Ms. Ostrum held positions in higher education, including in undergraduate admissions at Yale. She has appeared as a guest expert in numerous media outlets, including NBC’s Today show, and continues to write and publish on a variety of education policy issues. Ms. Ostrum taught high school social studies for seven years.

Lance Chase – Mr. Chase has spent almost 20 years as a secondary school teacher and administrator, with a strong career emphasis on developing teacher capacity and improving student performance. His achievements include the creation of a district mentorship program for new teachers, development of a comprehensive college preparatory curriculum, and advisement of a student tour of West Africa. Mr. Chase has facilitated Columbia University’s New Teacher Academy and served as School Planning Principal for City University of New York’s Early College High School. Results of his innovations include a 40% reduction in student marking period failures.

Juan Gilbert – Dr. Gilbert, the new Chair of Human-Centered Computing at Clemson University (effective August 10, 2009), is developing the back end of HSF’s online professional development platform. Dr. Gilbert has research projects in spoken language systems, advanced learning technologies, usability and accessibility, Ethnocomputing (Culturally Relevant Computing) and databases/data mining. He has published more than 75 articles, given more than 120 talks and obtained more than $9 million dollars in research funding over the past 9 years. Recently, Dr. Gilbert was named a Master of Innovation by Black Enterprise Magazine, a Modern-Day Technology Leader by the Black Engineer of the Year Award Conference, the Pioneer of the Year by the National Society of Black Engineers and he received the Black Data Processing Association (BDPA) Epsilon Award for Outstanding Technical Contribution.

Board
Maggie Begley – Senior Counsel, Pioneer Investments
Worth David – Dean of Undergraduate Admissions (Retired), Yale University
Dwight D. Jones – Colorado Commisioner of Education
Eric J. Kaplan – Associate Secretary, University of Pennsylvania
H. Chase Lenfest – Chairman, Lenfest Media Group
Eva Ostrum – Founder and CEO, High School Futures, Inc.
Max Starks – Offensive Tackle (#78), Pittsburgh Steelers
Daniel White – Co-Founder, The Prodigy Group, Inc.
Arthur W. Zeckendorf III – Tufts University

National Faculty and Consultants
Elizabeth A. City (Data Wise Consultant) – Dr. City helps educators improve teaching and learning through leadership development and strategic use of data and resources. She is Director of Instructional Strategy at Harvard University’s Executive Leadership Program for Educators and has served as a teacher, instructional coach, and principal. Dr. City’s publications include Resourceful Leadership: Tradeoffs and Tough Decisions on the Road to School Improvement (2008) and Data Wise: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Assessment Results to Improve Teaching and Learning (2005).

Jenny Gelber (Founding National Faculty Member) – Dr. Jenny Gelber, president of Gelber Search Associates, provides executive leadership development, trains high-performing teams, and recruits executive leadership in the K–12 education sector. Dr. Gelber has served as Associate Director for the Leadership Education Program at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government (KSG), on the faculty of the KSG Summer Management Program and Harvard Graduate School of Education Principals’ Center, and as Policy Advisor and Press Secretary to the Boston School Committee Chair. Dr. Gelber was a founding faculty member of the Wildacres Leadership Initiative in North Carolina.

Liz Gewirtzman (Founding National Faculty Member) – Baruch College School of Public Affairs Distinguished Lecturer Liz Gewirtzman directs New Visions for Public Schools’ Scaffolded Apprenticeship Model, a comprehensive school reform model that emphasizes teacher leadership and empowerment as key elements of school improvement. Professor Gewirtzman’s numerous accomplishments in urban education include serving as Director of Operations in New York City’s former District 2, directing the High School Leadership Development Program funded by the Carnegie Corporation, and co–authoring Principal Training on the Ground: Ensuring Highly Qualified Leadership.

Anne E. Jones (Founding National Faculty Member) – Dr. Jones currently works with districts and schools across the country to build and sustain Data Wise cultures. She spent five years as a middle school science teacher and has collaborated on the creation of teacher professional development programs for organizations such as TERC. Dr. Jones served as a member of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick's Education Issues Committee and Harvard University’s Next Generation of Teachers project. She authored a chapter in Richard Ackerman’s book, Uncovering Teacher Leadership.

Will Jordan (Founding National Faculty Member) – Temple University Associate Professor of Urban Education Will Jordan’s recent scholarship has focused on enhancing program and policy development to improve conditions of education in urban schools. In recent years, Dr. Jordan has engaged in research projects on high school and postsecondary collaborations, connections between school leadership content knowledge in mathematics and instructional quality, and interventions to improve failing comprehensive high schools. His related interests and expertise fall in the areas of urban education, high school reform, resiliency among adolescents of color, and at-risk students.

Trent Kaufman (Data Wise Consultant) – Dr. Kaufman founded and runs Education Direction, a scholastic research firm that specializes in Performance Management and the use of data to improve instructional quality. A chapter author of Data Wise in Action: Stories of Schools Using Data to Improve Teaching and Learning (2007), Dr. Kaufman consults to HSF and to states, districts, and schools across the country on the Data Wise approach. The percentage of Dr. Kaufman’s students who demonstrated proficiency on the state summative examination grew 200% during his five years in the classroom. As an administrator, he consistently led his school to AYP, with a 10% growth in proficiency on the state reading and mathematics tests each year of his tenure.

Steven C. Leonard (Founding National Faculty Member) – Taunton Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Steven Leonard has a long history of effecting turnaround in failing urban secondary schools. Most notably, he led Boston’s Jeremiah E. Burke High School to re-accreditation and to eventual recognition as the recipient of a College Board Inspiration Award. Dr. Leonard was a member of the 2002 inaugural class of Broad Academy Fellows, a prestigious training program for urban superintendents.

Michael D. Rettig (Scheduling Consultant) – Dr. Rettig consults to HSF on school scheduling, as he has in 41 states and over 750 school districts nationally and internationally. He has conducted hundreds of workshops and has authored numerous articles and books on school scheduling and related topics. Dr. Rettig’s prior experience includes 15 years as a professor in the College of Education and Director of the Center for School Leadership at James Madison University (JMU), Harrisonburg, VA, from which he retired in 2006. In addition to his work in higher education, he taught in elementary and middle schools for 10 years and served as a school principal.

Jonathon D. Saphier (Founding National Faculty Member) – Research for Better Teaching (RBT), founded and run by Dr. Saphier, has provided professional development on the knowledge base of teaching in hundreds of school districts in the United States and abroad. Dr. Saphier serves as an NLNS core faculty member and as a panel member for the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council, on transferring educational research knowledge to classroom practice. Dr. Saphier has authored eight books, including The Skillful Teacher, which 60 teacher preparation programs use as a text, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Brown. Dr. Saphier spent 10 years as a classroom teacher (elementary and high school).

Donors (in chronological order, most recent first)
The Heinz Endowments
The Grable Foundation
H. Chase Lenfest Foundation
Anonymous

Fiscal Sponsor
HSF is a program partner of the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition (GPUAC), a 501(c)(3) organization acting as our fiscal sponsor.

High School Futures, Inc. is a program partner of the Greater Philadelphia Urban Affairs Coalition, Inc. (GPUAC), a 501(c)(3) organization. All donations are tax deductible.